TORONTO, April 1, 2022 /CNW/ - St. Joseph Communications (SJC) today announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Assembly Digital (Assembly), a leading digital media technology company that employs data and machine learning systems to scale audience growth and advertising solutions.

Co-founded by Tobyn Sowden and Marco Pimentel, and part of the Redbrick portfolio of companies, Assembly is an award-winning Victoria-based company that was recently named the fastest growing company in British Columbia by reporting impressive revenue growth since its inception in 2015. It also won a Digiday Media Award in 2020 for Best Use of Audience Insights.

"Assembly and SJC have a shared vision to bring best-in-class technology and user experiences to innovate how people consume content and connect with brands," said Tony Gagliano, SJC Chairman & CEO. "We're thrilled for Assembly's highly talented team to join SJC and we're confident together we will accomplish important things for the future of digital publishing."

Analyzing billions of data points, Assembly's proprietary technology optimizes content experiences and ad placement based on real-time reader behaviour. The ground-breaking platform will be the newest addition to SJC's innovative multi-platform strategies for content creation and distribution. SJC Media publishes Canada's largest portfolio of media brands including Chatelaine, Toronto Life and Maclean's, with 19 million monthly views across its powerful digital network.

"Assembly and SJC are each the best in the country at what they do," said Ken Hunt, President & Publisher of SJC Media. "With the perfect mix of modern technology and decades of traditional publishing expertise, we will provide more relevant and dynamic content for our readers and more scale and revenue for our advertisers."

"We have spent several years building technology that anticipates readers' needs to power digital media," said Jamie Geiger, CEO of Assembly. "This move will enable us to advance the potential of Assembly by providing SJC with the technology to reach larger audiences more effectively and serve advertisers more efficiently. It's an exciting next step for our team."

Working closely with SJC Media, Assembly's 25-person team of engineers, developers, performance marketing specialists and content experts will continue to operate in downtown Victoria, B.C.

About St. Joseph Communications

As Canada's largest privately owned media and marketing company, SJC creates, prints and publishes best-in-class multi-channel content. SJC owns Canada's most storied and award-winning media brands including Chatelaine, FASHION, HELLO! Canada, Maclean's, Ottawa Magazine, Today's Parent and Toronto Life. For the last 18 years, SJC has been recognized as one of Canada's Best Managed Companies. Visit stjoseph.com.

About Assembly

Assembly is one of Canada's fastest-growing companies powering digital publishers. Its proprietary technology supports publishing brands, delivering the content readers need when they need it. Originally co-founded by Tobyn Sowden and Marco Pimentel, Assembly was a digital publishing company in the Redbrick portfolio – a multinational leader in technology and software development. Today, Assembly disrupts the digital publishing industry with an innovative stack of technology including Platform IO, Statera, Output and Proof. Visit assmb.ly/ and rdbrck.com.